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All of the 15 inundated districts in Nan have been declared disaster zones as the effects of the heavy weekend rainstorms continue to spread across the northern provinces.

An aerial view shows Nan province’s Muang district partly submerged due to heavy downfalls over the past few days. RARINTHORN PETCHAROEN

Hotels and shops in Nan Municipality in Muang district bore the heaviest brunt of the flood as water rose so rapidly that many home owners could not move their belongings in time and simply saw them disappear.

Some of the affected householders unleashed their anger by catapulting stones at passing cars that drove through flooded roads and caused waves to wash into their homes.

Yesterday, Red Cross and Dutai tambon municipality officials travelled in flat-bottomed boats loaded with food and drinking water to help stranded villagers in Ban Don Mun Moo 13 in tambon Dutai in Muang district, where 158 houses were submerged under three metres of water.

More relief supplies, distributed by His Majesty the King, are being carried to the province for 1,500 flood victims.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva will inspect the province today. Muang, Phu Phiang, Tha Wang Pha, Pua and Wiang Sa districts have been hardest hit by the Haima depression in the Gulf of Tonkin in northern Vietnam.

The depression also hit other northern provinces, bringing flash floods and a high risk of mudslides.

In Tak, governor Samat Loifa said his officials had already evacuated villagers of Ban Kha Ne Chue in Tha Song Yang district as heavily soaked soil on a nearby mountain began to crumble.

Tha Song Yang, Umphang, Mae Ramat, Phop Phra and Mae Sot districts of Tak province have already been declared disaster zones following two days of heavy downpours.

Two people in Mae Sot were reportedly killed in the disaster, while an elderly man was washed away in a canal and a Burmese boy was electrocuted.

Burmese traders of smuggled goods in the "no man's land" - an overlapping islet between Thailand and Burma, under the Thai-Burmese Friendship bridge - are struggling against the sharp rise of the Moei river. Some were forced to come ashore on to Thai soil in Mae Sot.

In Phayao, officials are preparing to declare Pong and Chun districts disaster zones after floods caused about 58 million baht worth of damage to houses, farmland and roads in the province.

The Meteorological Department yesterday warned of more heavy rainfall in the North, the East and the Central Plains due to a low-pressure, monsoon trough in the North and the strong southwest monsoon in the Andaman Sea.